#01583 KolbeEtal 2012
#01583 KolbeEtal 2012
#01583 KolbeEtal 2012
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Evolution
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REPORTS
Acknowledgments: We thank T. Giesecke and M. Lascoux for
helpful comments; J. Chen, T. Geburek, and C. Sperisen for
providing modern samples; and L. Yuan for initial spruce
genotyping. We also thank T. Vorren and K.-D. Vorren for
providing Andya core samples with lithostratigraphy and
radiocarbon dates. This study was supported by the Swedish
Research Council (grant 2007-4490 to L.P.) and the Carl
Tryggers Foundation (grant 08:303 to L.P.); KAKENHI
(22658046); a Royal SocietyWolfson Merit Award to K.D.B.;
the Danish National Research Foundation; the Norwegian
Forest and Landscape Institute, University of Troms; and the
Troms University Museum, the Roald Amundsen Centre for
Arctic Research, and the European Commission under the Sixth
Framework 378 Programme (EcoChange project, contract no.
FP6-036866). L.P., T.J., M.M.T., and E.E. should be considered
joint first authors. I.G.A. and E.W. should be considered joint
senior authors. The authors declare no competing financial
interests. P.T. is coinventor of patents related to the g/h
primers and the use of the P6 loop of the chloroplast trnL
sland populations are renowned for their extent of divergence from each other and from
mainland source populations (1, 2). Mayr
(3, 4) argued that these differences are often
triggered by random sampling when island populations are founded by a few colonizing individuals. The resultant founder effectschanges in
the genetic and phenotypic composition of a population due to founding by a small number of
individualshave been proposed as an important
cause of evolutionary divergence and even speciation for the past half-century (36). However,
an alternative explanation is that island environments differ from each other and from the source
locality, and these ecological differences result in
divergent natural selection (79). The evolutionary significance of founder effects also has been
1
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford
Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. 2Department of Biology,
Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA. 3Section of Evolution and Ecology and Center for Population Biology, One Shields
Avenue, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
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questioned because their imprint may be shortlived if populations perish because of a lack of
genetic variation or because of demographic stochasticity, or if natural selection overwhelms their
effects (10, 11). Data from nature are lacking because founder events are rarely observed [but see
(12)], and thus their effects must be inferred post
hoc; yet laboratory studies indicate that even in
the presence of natural selection, genetic drift induced by founder effects or population bottlenecks
can contribute to patterns of phenotypic divergence [e.g., (13, 14)]. We report an experimental
study of founder effects in a natural system of a
Caribbean lizard, demonstrating that morphological divergence caused by the founder effect
persists even as populations adapt to their new
environments.
Some have argued that marked phenotypic
change from a single founder event is very unlikely (11) and that genetic drift in general plays little
part in morphological evolution (15). Moreover,
others note that evidence from recent introductions suggests that adaptation is a more common
cause of trait evolution than drift (1618). Yet
most concede that documenting these random
sampling events in nature is exceedingly difficult
(11, 15, 1921). Without knowledge of founder
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attributes and repeated sampling of colonized islands, the relative contributions of founder effects, population bottlenecks, natural selection, and
gene flow to evolutionary divergence are impossible to disentangle (1921).
We capitalized on the extensive knowledge
of how Anolis lizards adapt to their environment,
combined with the opportunity to use small islands in the Bahamas, recently cleared of lizards
by a hurricane, as experimental units in a natural
setting. Our focus was on limb length and the
extent to which lizard populations would adapt to
the novel environments on these small and scrubby islands. Extensive comparative and experimental research supports an adaptive explanation for
the positive relationship between hindlimb length
and perch diameter (i.e., the width of the cross section of the substrate that a lizard perches on, such
as a branch or trunk) that is found among populations of anoles. Functional studies show a
clear biomechanical basis: Lizards with relatively
longer hindlimbs run faster on broad substrates,
whereas lizards with shorter limbs for a given
body size move more adeptly on narrow surfaces.
Such performance probably aids in capturing prey,
defending territories, and escaping from predators. Indeed, field studies in this system show that
hindlimb length is under selection, favoring longer
hindlimbs to run faster when exposed to terrestrial predators and shorter hindlimbs after lizards
become arboreal and shift to narrower perches
[reviewed in (22)].
To assess the relative importance of founder
effects versus natural selection, we introduced lizards to replicate islands to which we predicted
they were not well adapted because of differences
in structural habitat from their source, thereby simulating founding events and altering the selective
regime for limb length. Specifically, founding propagules were established on small experimental
islands, all of which are sparsely vegetated and
covered primarily with short, narrow-diameter vegetation as compared to the more forested habitat
of the lizards source area on a nearby larger island (Fig. 1 and figs. S1 and S2). Our prediction
is that if natural selection is the dominant force,
then we would expect all populations to evolve
shorter hindlimbs as they adapt to using narrower
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REPORTS
Fig. 4, inset). As with the genetic data, hindlimb
values for island populations were dispersed around
the mean value of the source population on Iron
Cay (fig. S3). Furthermore, there was no relationship between perch diameter and relative hindlimb
length among islands in 2006 (r2 = 0.15, P = 0.39),
supporting the interpretation that differences in
hindlimb length among islands resulted from the
founder event rather than adaptive divergence.
Fig. 1. Vegetation differences between the source population and those of the experimental founder
islands. The schematic cartoon shows the change in the vegetation profile for lizards introduced from the
source population on the more forested Iron Cay to the sparsely vegetated experimental founder islands.
The vegetation illustrated is scaled to the mean values of vegetation height for Iron Cay and the pooled
experimental founder islands, respectively. Bar graphs show the difference (mean T SE) in available vegetation height and diameter from systematic transects on each island. We predicted that the change in
vegetation profile would result in lizards using narrower perches on experimental founder islands, which
would alter the selective regime to favor shorter hindlimbs.
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Population size
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0.03
0.03
0.02
0.01
0.02
0.01
N1
N15
N3
N4
-0.01
X3*
N2
-0.02
X10
-0.03
2006
2007
2009
Year
-0.01
-0.02
-0.03
Reference
Islands
Experimental
Founder Islands
Fig. 4. Change in hindlimb length on reference and experimental founder islands. Change in mean
relative hindlimb length [calculated as the residuals of the regression of loghindlimb length on log-body
length (i.e., snout-vent length), separately for each sex] per year for populations on experimental founder
and reference islands, including the source population on Iron Cay (open circle). The inset in the upper
right shows how the mean (TSE) relative hindlimb length decreases on the experimental founder islands
in each year. Islands N1, N3, and X3* are shown with dotted lines for clarity. Immigration does not alter
the results for hindlimb differentiation, which are virtually identical when putative immigrants are removed from analyses. Although the source population (Iron Cay) decreased in hindlimb length, all lizards
on experimental founder islands exhibited even greater decreases than those on Iron Cay and on all other
reference islands, with the mean rate of hindlimb change on reference islands not differing from zero.
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PCo 2 (21%)
6
Fig. 3. Multilocus genotypic variation for the
source population and
those of the experiment4
al founder islands. We
conducted a PCo analysis
of six microsatellite loci
2
(mean T SE of PCo values). Numbers within each
symbol correspond to different sampling years: I,
0
2005 (i.e., the founding
Iron Cay
pair on each experimentN1
al founder island and
-2
N2
these same founder indiN3
viduals pooled for the
N4
source population estimate
on Iron Cay); II, 2006 (no
N15
-4
Iron Cay estimate); III,
X3*
2007; and IV, 2009. The
X10
percentage of variation
-6
explained for each PCo
-12
-10
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
axis is in parentheses.
Stored sperm use was
PCo 1 (29%)
detected in 6% of offspring through 2006, resulting in offspring fathered by a male other than the one introduced onto the island. However, all other individuals sampled during this
time had multilocus genotypes consistent with being progeny of the founding pair (or founding female in the case of stored sperm use), and not until 2007 did
we detect unambiguous immigrants.
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